Third Eye Blind Just Released a Song About Police Brutality: Listen to 'Cop vs. Phone Girl'

Original story: Third Eye Blind is throwing itself into the debate against police brutality with “Cop vs. Phone Girl,” a new song that details an assault and then fans out to support the Black Lives Matter movement.

Frontman Stephan Jenkins sings about a police officer putting “his hands around a 16-year-old girl’s neck” while the girl in question was not guilty of any crime. In the extended third verse, Jenkins ponders, “Why's it so hard to say Black Lives Matter? / Doesn’t mean that you’re anti-white / Take it from me—I’m super fucking white,” before declaring that, hey, Third Eye Blind has black fans and white fans! Just like every other band.

Listen to “Cop vs. Phone Girl":

According to a press release, the song details an assault that took place last year at Spring Valley High in South Carolina, and was partially inspired by the time Jenkins briefly worked at a school for emotionally disturbed children after college.

"Sometimes, we had to restrain kids who were having violent outbursts,” Jenkins recalls in a statement. “We were trained not to frighten them much less cause harm. The contrast really hit home to me just how surreal and insane this incident was.”

“Cop vs. Phone Girl” will be included on Third Eye Blind’s upcoming EP We Are Drugs, which follows last year’s Dopamine album. The band will likely perform the song at Lollapalooza and Outside Lands in the coming week.